Gratuitous

Maybe it is the state of mind I'm in lately. Perhaps it is somewhat hormonal. It could even be that I am getting older and stodgier. Or maybe it is just the fact that I'm now a mother. Whatever the reason, the fact is that I find myself more and more impatient with cinematic violence.

This weekend my husband was all fired up to watch Deliverance. He had been glued to his film documentaries in his spare time all last week and I suppose it put a bug in his ear. He wasn't going to be satisfied until he watched it. God bless him, he wanted to share that experience with his darling wife. I had no desire at all to see this movie. I'd heard enough and was nervous that I would find its execution unsettling to my stomach. But that man is just so adorable, I couldn't say no.

I will admit, I have a weak constitution when it comes to these things. After many difficult years of finding excuses to chit chat with my friend's parents in the kitchen during slumber party screenings of D Grade horror flicks, I've come to think of my squeemishness as a badge of my ultimate humanity. When I watch people being murdered I can't help but imagine their last moments. It doesn't thrill me. It hurts. It actually hurts a lot.

Before the feature presentation we watched an overly reverent "making of". The 10 minute promotional film touted the author as an absolute genius, a robust Hemingway-type who laments human footprints on the majesty of nature. It made the film sound as if it was one of those "Nature Tests Man" stories that will make the viewer more appreciate the majesty of all that surrounds us. In my eyes, Deliverance did for eco-tourism what 9/11 did for air travel. The promo film was a lie. Deliverance does nothing to spur the viewer toward environmental protection. Instead it seems to make the argument that people who live an isolated life in the mountains NEED to be "civilized". Let's hurry up and build roads and Wal-Marts and get them cable so they don't go around raping tourists!

And THEN! AND THEN we need to be subjected to men making bad decision after bad decision just to give us that sick feeling of our stomachs dropping through our shoes. The text does not stop to examine their moral dilemma for longer than a cinematic nanosecond. It just plunges from one bad decision to the next. It isn't really the actions I have a particular distaste for- it's the world view I despise. This film could only be written by some macho intellectual who has gleened from his years as a university professor that humans are inherently evil and self-serving. If that is true, then why should I even care enough to pay attention to your story? If people are hard wired to make immoral choices in the absense of a governing authority then what can I learn from any story at all? The whole attitude just ticks me off.

I do not advocate that all stories must have a moral high road. But I do question why I should sit through something that offers no hope of redemption. Why should I watch something that is only going to make me sick? What good does it do to perpetuate the idea that people just plain, out and out suck?

A friend of mine recently recommended that I go to see Eastern Promises. However, she warned me that the violence is too much to take in only one... well two... maybe three parts of the film. Okay, maybe I might want to spend a good third of the film in the bathroom just to be safe because even the SOUND is horribly violent. I think I will pass. I suffer from no illusions. I know that war is hell, murder is wrong, and rape is terrifying. I don't need it spelled out for me in graphic detail. I don't think those that do need the visual representations are getting the point from the current wave of blood and guts on screen. Don't lie to me and tell me that this sensationalism is to reach some higher moral objective because it isn't working. Empathy does not seem to be on the rise in this country- but the output of blood and guts does. And really, all that does is make me sad.